


Co-Op Mode

by Barkour



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-04 01:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime and Bart play video games together in Jaime's dorm room (and maybe talk about some stuff).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Co-Op Mode

“Whoa!” said Bart. “Whoa, whoa, wait, go back, you have to go back, there was a power-up back there—”

Jaime twisted away from Bart, who was seriously breaking the personal space rules they’d established a month ago for a _reason_. He’d already crossed the pillow border. His hipbone jutted into Jaime’s gut. Fingers wormed across Jaime’s shoulders. A diplomatic fiasco brewed in the half an inch between Bart’s face and Jaime’s neck. Quarter-inch.

“No, there’s not,” Jaime said, “I know what I’m doing, ese, this isn’t the first time me and Mario hung out—”

“There was a mushroom back there!” said Bart. He leaned into Jaime’s shoulder. Basically he was just dead weight-ing it against Jaime, like his all of a hundred and twenty pounds could make Jaime black out. “You missed it! You have to go back for it! Do you want to shoot fireballs or not?”

“We talked about this,” Jaime warned as he guided Mario over a series of Pakkun Flowers. “No backseat game playing. I don’t mess you up so you don’t mess me up—come mierda!”

Lakitu zoomed into view, perched neatly on his little cloud. The bespectacled jerk started tossing Spiny eggs; they rained down onto the level, hatching on ledges, the ground, in the mouth of a Pakkun Flower. Bart sighed in Jaime’s ear. The heat of his breath ran down Jaime’s spine like fingers slipped under his shirt, and Jaime squirmed away, away from Bart’s breath at the corner of his jaw, Bart’s weight on his side, and Bart’s hand still draped over his shoulder.

“Well, now you _can’t_ go back.”

“Man, shut up,” said Jaime, “I’m trying to channel you right now.”

Mario ate up the ground. Lakitu chased after him, throwing Spiny eggs like Mario was a bad movie and the eggs were popcorn. 

“Oh! Oh!” Bart started slapping Jaime’s back. “Block! Block! Power block! Get the block! You missed it!” He shook Jaime.

“Dude, I told you—”

“Grife,” said Bart, “you’re so slow, gimme that—” His arms snaked around Jaime. He reached for the controller.

“Hands off!” 

Jaime elbowed Bart in the chest. Bart took heavy damages and collapsed back on the bed, rubbing at his ribs.

“You killed me,” said Bart mournfully. “I should have known better than to trust you.”

“Stop messing around,” said Jaime, though he did spare Bart a quick look. How could he not? There was still some little tremulous thing inside Jaime’s chest that had tensed up in fear, some thing knotted into his spine several inches south of the scarab, there at the base.

Bart was crossing his eyes at Jaime and making monster faces.

“Man,” said Jaime, disgusted, “don’t mess with me like that. That’s fucked up. Aren’t you traumatized from that shit?”

Bart shrugged and, folding his arms, pillowed his head on his hands. He stuck his legs up, resting his feet on Jaime’s back.

“I’m over it,” he said. “You guys have therapy. How cool is that? I talk to Martian Manhunter twice a month and we visualize positive forward growth, and then Wally takes me out for ice cream.”

Distracted by the flexing of Bart’s foot between his shoulders – Bart was scratching at his ankle with the toes of the other foot – Jaime ran Mario into a Spiny and then off a cliff. He groaned and hung his head. 

“Your turn.” Jaime jabbed the controller at Bart.

“Naw, I’m crash.” Bart poked Jaime’s neck with his big toe. “You can play my life. I want to see if you can beat this level on your own.”

Jaime rolled his shoulders and arched his back, but Bart regrouped, bringing his legs up and then bringing them, crossed at the knees, down again on Jaime’s back. The level loaded. Jaime started Mario off at a loose, limber jog. Three Goombas coming up fast, but he was ready for ‘em.

“Do they even have Super Mario Brothers in the future?”

“Not when I was there,” said Bart. He uncrossed his legs and began rubbing his feet absently down the curve of Jaime’s spine, mindful of the scarab below his neck. “Maybe they do now, though. That would be cool. Wow, do you ever think about how the world I come from doesn’t even exist anymore? You know, hopefully.”

Jaime hit the pause button. Mario froze in the act of punching a brick. Fragments of pixellated stone shot out of that heroic Italian plumber’s fist.

Bart looked back at Jaime, and Bart’s eyes were lidded not with any of the things writers liked to write people lidding their eyes. He looked sleepy, mostly. Calm.

Jaime shifted on the bed, pulling his legs up as he turned to Bart. Bart’s feet dropped one-two onto the mattress, and then Jaime took his legs by the ankles and lifted Bart’s feet to rest them in his lap.

“What’d you pause for? You were totally winning.”

“I don’t know,” said Jaime. “But it is your turn. So it wasn’t really fair for me to keep playing.”

He stroked his thumb up the light arch of Bart’s right foot. Bart wriggled his toes.

“Mario’s boring,” said Bart. “I like Sonic better.”

Jaime laughed, and Bart, grinning, pressed the advantage. Well—he pressed something, all right. The ball of his left foot pushed into Jaime’s upper thigh.

“Watch it.”

“I’m watching,” said Bart, his toes slowly working their way north. Jaime grasped his right foot and bent the toes of that foot back.

“Man,” said Jaime, “when’d you get so dirty?”

Bart made a show of pulling up his t-shirt and sniffing the collar. “I took a shower today.” His eyes flicked up. The collar hid his mouth, but the skin at his eyes creased; his cheeks rounded.

Jaime pushed Bart’s feet out of his lap and then—he’d wanted to reach for Bart, but that little thing inside him had turned awkward, and instead Jaime settled back on his knees.

“Hey, Blue,” said Bart. He pushed at Jaime’s leg with a foot. “What’s sky-high?”

“Nothing,” said Jaime, because his throat itched. “It’s just—” It was just that years later, he still sometimes turned and saw Bart and thought, _He came back._

Now Bart gazed up at Jaime with that calm, careful look, the sort of look he’d hidden for so very long. Then—now—Bart’s face lit with a smile, and that was true, too.

“It’s just you can’t believe someone as totally mondo fly as me is in your bed,” said Bart.

“Yeah,” said Jaime. He smiled back, and he knew it was probably a dopey kind of smile, but whatever. Dopey kinds of smiles came with the territory. “Something like that.”

He did reach for Bart then, and Bart reached for him, too. And then there were fingers under Jaime’s shirt, as Bart felt for Jaime’s ribs under the lean muscle he’d packed on. Jaime got a couple hits in, too, nuzzling at Bart’s long neck and bony jaw.

Khaji Da emerged from his standard date-related exile to sound an alert: _Jaime Reyes, the roommate approaches._

Jaime lifted his head. The door opened. Bart looked up, too.

“Oh, great,” said Ji-hun. “Can’t you put a sock on the door or something?”

“We’re playing video games,” Bart explained. He had his hands up Jaime’s shirt and a heel hooked behind Jaime’s knee, and Jaime knew for a fact that there was a fresh hickey on the side of Bart’s neck visible from the door.

“Yeah,” said Jaime. “Uh. Super Mario Brothers.”

“I’m winning,” Bart added.

“I’m leaving,” said Ji-hun, already pulling the door shut behind him, “before I find out who’s Luigi.”

_I am also leaving_ , said Khaji Da.

Bart dug his fingers into Jaime’s back and pulled Jaime down beside him. His leg rode up to Jaime’s waist.

“All right,” said Bart. “I was about to find a power-up.”

His fingers crept higher. He massaged Jaime’s shoulders, pulling at him so that Jaime wriggled way up and personal. Their hips nudged. Jaime nudged closer.

“Sorry, ese,” said Jaime, “but I don’t keep mushrooms in my shirt.”

“Not in your _shirt_ , ese,” said Bart, rolling his eyes.

“Ugh!” said Jaime. “You’re so dirty. What happened?”

Bart waggled his eyebrows. “I’m visualizing positive forward growth, in my pan—”

Jaime kissed him to shut Bart up. That, and just to kiss him. Sometimes to win the game you had to play together.


End file.
